BOOKS IN BRIEF: FICTION & POETRY

By Tim Wilson

Published: February 8, 2004

HAPPY DAYS

By Laurent Graff.

Carroll & Graf, paper, $11.

Brevity may well be the soul of wit, but in ''Happy Days,'' a novella by the French writer Laurent Graff, it also harbors mordancy. The book's setup offers great comedic possibilities. At the ripe old age of 35, the narrator, Antoine, installs himself in an old-age home. ''I'm where I ought to be,'' he says, ''here, among those who no longer expect or wait for anything, abandoning themselves to a caricature of a life.'' Unfortunately, the place itself is a caricature. The inmates attend an Iggy Pop concert; they watch a Lars von Trier movie: you know the drill. Antoine's cynicism and passivity also seem familiar. ''I don't want to crack a bad joke,'' he protests. He does, of course, and so does the author. At one point, Antoine obliges the dying wish of a terminally ill inmate named Mireille by taking her to the seaside. But when the poor thing demands some oysters, he briefly considers murdering her by driving the car into a tree. In this adept translation by Linda Coverdale, however, the collapse of Antoine's fatalism redeems the narrative. He buys Mireille periwinkles instead, watches her, frail and death-bound, consuming them, and has an epiphany. Speaking of life, he says: ''I measure its full weight, stripped of every blemish, placed in the balance against death, and I tip the scales irresistibly in life's favor.'' If existence is poison, Graff suggests, tenderness is the antidote. Tim Wilson